“Tennis doesn’t have an idea problem,” former USTA head of pro tennis Arlen Kantarian told a group of our editors 20 years ago. “It has a get-it-done problem.”
The question we were discussing wasn’t a new one: Why doesn’t tennis have its version of the Ryder Cup? Golf’s biennial team event was mustsee TV, yet tennis remained stumped as to how to replicate it. Bringing the sport’s alphabet soup of stakeholders together was too daunting a task. More than a decade after Kantarian’s exit, tennis’ get-it-done problem remained.
And then, over one weekend in 2017, the sport got it done. The Laver Cup, which will return for its third edition in Geneva this September, has been a hit. In its first two years, the Ryder Cup-like team event sold out all 10 sessions in Prague and Chicago, while delighting fans with a steady stream of content tailor-made for social media.
This story is from the September - October 2019 edition of Tennis.
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This story is from the September - October 2019 edition of Tennis.
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